Quite a powerful and energetic gig that was rather short. Possibly due to the short length of their songs. Compared to last summer’s Nintendocoriade I’d range them between Les Trucs and Gtuk. Less interesting than the former and not quite as outlandish as the latter.

And they were selling pretty cool 8cm CDs [MacBook suckers, try to read these!] which turn out to be spray painted. With average song lengths of less than two minutes, even the tiny CD comes with ten titles and room to spare…

Their support band Lawrence Arabia went down rather well with my friends even though they sounded like choir kids from time to time.

I think the audience was a bit un-enthusiastic throughout and when Das Pop started playing it also seemed a bit too big for the band to be able to create that specific atmosphere. Yet – battling the technical difficulties of countless defective cables and plugs – they tried and delivered a show that was much more intense and direct than their latest (eponymous, hence almost impossible to find on the web) album led us to suspect/fear. Good stuff.

Now, if only my crappy camera could have made a non-shaky version of this photo:

It might have been great, even showing off the singer’s weirdly 1980s style shoes. Perhaps one of the countless people taking photos in the room managed to catch that. While I love photos I found the amount and annoyingness of photo people at this gig astounding. It also seemed that the more ‘professional’ ones (i.e. the ones with the proper cameras) cared mainly about how they pose while standing in front of the stage and taking photos. Weird.

While playing in the same minimalistic two-person guitar-and-drums setup of the White Stripes, Japandroids’ music couldn’t be more different. It’s much more noisy and even more so when they played live than it is on the album. Almost a ‘wall of sound’ coming from the numerous amps towards the audience at all times which may make it hard to catch details but is exhilarating and impressive.

Fun detail: They had a fan on stage which kept blowing the guitarists’ hair. Just like in the movies.

XOXOX

Their music and songs were excellent, joining up generous amounts of shouting and screaming with loud rhythms an small bits of electronica. An excellent start for the music year 2010, definitely recommended!

It seemed like they were genuinely pleased by the small crowd that had gathered. And I liked Binoculers music with the acoustic guitar and greater clarity better. I also keep thinking that her singing sounds a bit like the singer of Dear Reader.

It sounds like there may not be many more (if any) of these concerts to come as the organiser will be leaving town. A big thank you to Inga anyway, it was great while it lasted.

The gig was a really nice experience, both because of the band and the general un-exciting homely setup with everybody sitting on sofas within a few metres of the band. The music starting at the early time of eight made it a great and non-strenuous weekday night with a friend.

Strangely, we managed to spot two bands in that evening play versions of the 1980s song Blueprint, one of them being a lady (who, it seems, used to be a member of the original band) playing an acoustic set while the other was some ‘hard’ combo going by the amusing name of Superstarfuckers who seem to focus on the not-so-creative project of playing hard cover versions of 1980s songs in the style of kiddie-punk bands. Actually I’d say they made a good effort for that, but it wasn’t exactly interesting.

Niels Frevert played as well in a by far too huge room with some horribly echoey mixing going on. But there was an elk in the audience. Cool!

Playing as a support ‘band’ was Petula, a guy accompanying himself fully by using a guitar and a bunch of looping. Interesting but not quite as clever as Final Fantasy, I’d say.

Things were finished off by Eagle and Talon from L.A. with a completely different style who seemed like a completely different gig alltogether. They played well but I didn’t think the singing could really match the music. Bonus points for the drummer’s successful efforts of saying a few German words, including a city name with an umlaut.

[Buy at amazon .com, .uk, .de]

They played a lovely concert with two guitars, drums, a lap string instrument, a cello and a double bass. This was mostly acoustic and one or more members of the band were singing at times. The sound was fantastic in the small room we were sitting in (and, quite reliably, turns out to be less impressive on CD, the mixing just throws off the balance and subtlety of the combination and the great sound of the viola and bass), ranging from careful guitar playing with subtle singing to intense bass plucking with many of the band singing along. Quite magically the transitions between these were very smooth.

A great gig in a lovely atmosphere. With a band who seemed to enjoy it as much as the audience did.

[Buy at amazon .com, .uk, .de](only available in .de in Oct 2009 it seems, let’s hope that changes)